The Meaning and the Mirror of Sense: Notes for an Archaeology of Neurosciences

Summary:

Mirror-neurons allow us to understand the other’s action or intention. This is one of the most relevant discoveries of contemporary neurosciences. But how is this “mirroring” phenomenon to be understood? Is there a “content” being mirrored? If we “share” something with the other, as one of the leading researchers in this field puts it, is this shared content “in” one’s mind or in the other’s mind? Maybe one’s mind isn’t a box, within which we could find anything, but precisely the result of a mirroring phenomenon that takes place without any presupposed object (or subject). What about mirror-neurons if we re-read the whole series of empirical trials and results from this point of view – a non-mentalist, non subjectivist non-objectivistic, but a radically pragmatist and hermeneutical one?